Visual Meditations

Visual Meditations is a motion based, drawing application. Using forms of tracking such as blobs, motion differencing, and optical flow, the piece visualizes a live image and reflects a drawing back to the user. The user’s movement, or lack thereof, determines the styles of drawing the piece adapts. As such, the piece becomes a meditation on the perception of movement in a digital landscape.

Technology

Built in C++ and GLSL (GPU based Shader language for fast graphics processing), Visual Meditations uses an advanced foreground detection algorithm, combined with optical flow, to determine the user and judge the direction of their movements. These movements determine the stokes and gestures in the drawn image. Combining this with several layers of image processing, creates the effect of a real time sketch depicting the user’s actions.